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Background

With this publication Devadas Gandhi’s dream comes true, to document his father’s life by photographs day-by-day. He had started collecting photos of his father during Gandhi's life time but had to give it up when he became chief editor of Hindustan Times in the early 1950s. In an monumental effort GandhiServe India collected Gandhi's photographs from sources allover and did extensive research on the captions, too. Finally, over 5.000 photographs got colourized as per the historic settings. Except those who were lucky enough to meet Gandhi personally, the world has never seen him as natural and sharp as in this book! Now Devadas Gandhi’s dream comes true as nearly 1300 high quality photographs document Gandhi’s life in detail.

On the occasion of the Gandhi Centenary in 1969 the Government of India published a lavishly crafted photo book containing c. 300 duo-tone photographs of Mahatma Gandhi which remained the best work of its kind until today. Due to extensive research and technical advancement GandhiServe India is now able to publish the definite photo biography - on the occassion of the 150th birth anniversary, which will be celebrated the world over in 2019. In terms of photo quality and quantity this publication will be a valid successor of the 1969 publication.

This photo biography is a contribution to the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. It appeals to the conscience of humanity not to forget or ignore Gandhi's teachings.

The interdisciplinary project

Initiated by GandhiServe India, in an interdisciplinary project Gandhi scholars, historians, photo experts and graphic designers joined hands in order to turn black and white photographs into colour images, thus making them true documents of history. After scanning, all photographs have been cleaned digitally and colourized by skilled Indian hands according to the historic settings. When the photographs were taken the actual colourful scenes were reduced to black and white photographs due to technical limitations of those days. Now, in a complex process Indian experts added the missing colours. With this the intention was not to manipulate or adulterate pictures but to bring them closer to the colourful image the photograph documents.